The role of active memory in the development of cognitive control.

成年人的思维非常灵活，能够很容易地从复杂的环境中选择特定的信息流，然后重新配置自己，以完成全新的任务。这些心理能力似乎是由复杂的大脑网络的协调行动支持的，尽管目前这些网络的组织和功能还没有被很好地理解。了解这些能力的认知和大脑基础的一种方法是通过研究发育变化。年幼的孩子往往在思维上非常不灵活，当不再适合这样做的时候，他们仍然专注于视觉或听觉世界的特定特征。理解这种缺乏灵活性的基础，以及在发育过程中发生的神经认知变化，使大脑具有更大的灵活性，将为这些基本问题提供重要的启示。目前的研究计划侧重于主动记忆在认知控制发展中的作用。主动记忆使我们能够将当前的目标保持在脑海中的最前沿，突出环境中的相关信息，并减弱分心因素，可能是实施控制的大脑网络的重要专门化。通过使用认知-行为和神经成像相结合的方法，目前的计划将测试这些想法在理解学龄前儿童的僵化以及在儿童中期和成年早期发生的控制方面的发展变化方面的效用。

The adult human mind is remarkably flexible, readily able to select particular streams of information from a complex environment and then reconfigure itself for entirely new tasks. It appears that these mental abilities are supported by the coordinated action of complex brain networks, although at present, the organization and function of these networks is not well-understood. One means of gaining insight into the cognitive and brain bases of these abilities is through the study of developmental change. Young children are often strikingly inflexible in their thinking by remaining fixated on particular features of the visual or auditory world when it is no longer appropriate to do so. Understanding the basis of this inflexibility and the neurocognitive changes that occur in development that lend the mind greater flexibility would shed important light on these fundamental issues. The current research programme focuses on the role of active memory in the development of cognitive control. Active memory is what allows us to keep current goals in the forefront of our mind, highlight relevant information in the environment, and attenuate distractors, and may be an important specialization of brain networks that implement control. Through the use of converging cognitive-behavioural and neuroimaging methods, the current programme will test the utility of these ideas both for understanding inflexibility in preschool-aged children as well as developmental changes in control that occur between middle-childhood and early adulthood.